Animation in the 20th Century

Willis H. O'Brien:

In his spare time, O'Brien used to work on sculpting and illustrating and his natural talent led to him being employed first as a draftsman in an architect's office and then as a sports cartoonist for the San Francisco Daily News. While having a successful time as an architect, he still dabbled in making fictional character models such as cavemen and dinosaurs. He then, with the endorsement and support of a San Francisco exhibitor, went on to make his first short animated movie: The Dinosaur and the Missing Link in 1915. Impressed by the film,  Thomas Edison hired him to work in the Edison Company, animating prehistoric short films.

Ray Harryhausen:

Inspired by Willis O'Brien, Harryhausen experimented in the production of animated shorts using the similar techniques of stop-motion animation. O'Brien even critiqued his models/work and encouraged him to take classes in graphic arts. Again, drawing inspiration from O'Brien, he merged stop motion with live action using the same technique of rear projection. Some of his more popular works being Jason and the Argonauts (1963) and Clash of the Titans (1981).

Jan Svankmajer:

His early influences being puppetry, Svankmajer also uses stop motion and is known for his surreal and slightly nightmarish animations. He uses techniques like fast-motion sequences when people walk or interact and his sounds in his works are exaggerated; giving an eerie feeling to these actions. Many of his movies involve adding life to inanimate objects through stop motion. A prime example of this surreal animation of animate objects being Food (1992) and one of his more creepy works being Alice (1988).

Early Stages of Film: An Overview

The earliest forms of animation could date back in the 17th Century with devices such as Joseph Plateu's Phenakistoscope and William George Horner's Zoetrope. These devices were more toy like a relied on the principle of illusion and how the eye perceives light and images. The Zoetrope relied on the illusion of movement by having freeze frame images of a subject in movement, which was then spun in a drum and viewed through a slot. Similar devices were popular until the end of that Century until, inspired by these contraptions, other methods of recording movement were experimented with. 

Around the same time, the end of the 17th century, there was heavy experimentation with cameras and film, bringing along the use of the Kinetoscope Camera and the Kinetoscope Viewing Box. Louis and Auguste Lumière were challenged to rival this invention (the work of Thomas A. Edison and W.K.L Dickson) with something cheaper. The Lumière brothers decided to raise the bar by not only creating a camera that record but also projects what it has recorded. This device is named the Cinématographe. A year later the brothers realise their first film shot with the Cinématographe: La Sortie de l'usine Lumière a Lyon which, as the name suggests, was simply a recording of workers leaving a factory. Similar films were made using similar techniques with slight improvements.

Another noticeable moment, in the very early years of the following century is Georges Méliès's Voyage to the Moon. Inspired by the Lumière brother's early films, Méliès's film was know for its innovative special effect techniques and introducing colour (with the use of hand-painting and tinting).

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